[AnkitaA (OP)]

John asks:

"Has anyone calculated the carbon footprint of the Apollo 11 mission?

Do NASA calculate it for current missions and rocket launches?"

Do you know?

[alancalverd]

The first stage burned about 1000 tonnes of a modified jet fuel. The remaining stages used liquid hydrogen and therefore had zero carbon footprint. The command and lunar modules used hydrazine fuel, again with no carbon footprint.

It is in principle possible to build a liquid hydrogen first stage but kerosene is a lot easier to handle and apparently gives a smoother ride.

Every aviator and rocketeer knows exactly how much fuel is burned on every flight - it's part of the science of getting there! 

[RobC]

But does not the production of the hydrogen and hydrazine add to the carbon footprint?

[Bored chemist]

But does not the production of the hydrogen and hydrazine add to the carbon footprint?

Yes, enormously.
And the support infrastructure used even more.
Where do you draw the line?
If NASA employed some guy and he spent his wages flying to Paris for his holiday does that count?

[alancalverd]

The reactions for the production of hydrazine don't produce CO2, and the feedstock doesn't necessarily involve any carbon atoms at all. If the plant is powered by wind or solar electricity, and if you manufacture hydrogen by wind-powered electrolysis, I guess you could say that there is no essential carbon footprint involved.

Now the average person exhales 40 mg CO2 per breath, about half a ton every year. NASA employs 18,000 people directly and the number of contractors working on Apollo 11 was at least another 20,000. If they spent 5 years from drawing board to launch that's 95,000 tons of CO2, 30 times more than the rocket.

Which puts holiday flights into perspective! If you fly 1000 miles once a year in a fully loaded 737,  you burn about 30 kg of jet fuel per passenger and produce about 100 kg of CO2 - one tenth of what you exhale in a year. So if we reduced the human population by 10%, we could all go on holiday without destroying the planet.

[Bored chemist]

It's OK, Alan's just kidding really.
He does know the difference between carbon that's part of the biosphere and fossil fuel which as been sequestered fro ages.

He knows we eat plants, not coal, so our breath doesn't contribute to the massive change in CO2 levels since the industrial revolution.
He knows that because he's been told about it before.

The reactions for the production of hydrazine don't produce CO2, and the feedstock doesn't necessarily involve any carbon atoms at all. If the plant is powered by wind or solar electricity, and if you manufacture hydrogen by wind-powered electrolysis, I guess you could say that there is no essential carbon footprint involved.

Sure, just as soon as you get a time machine and go back to before apollo 11...

[alancalverd]

I also know that coal was plant material, so once upon a time there was a lot more carbon in the atmosphere than there is now, and that the changes introduced to ecology by farming and eating farmed meat have altered the balance between plants absorbing CO2 and animals exhaling it. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant!

[Bored chemist]

once upon a time

And what was teh human population back then?

the changes introduced to ecology by farming and eating farmed meat have altered the balance between plants absorbing CO2 and animals exhaling it.

Slightly.
But we keep burning zillions of tonnes of fossil fuel.
That's why there's about a third more CO2 in the air than there was before we started playing this game.
And that makes a difference
https://xkcd.com/1732/

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant!

I leave that to others.

[RandyWilliams]

John asks:

"Has anyone calculated the carbon footprint of the Apollo 11 mission?

Do NASA calculate it for current missions and rocket launches?"

Do you know?

Carbon Footprint (CF) – also named Carbon profile - is the overall   amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions   (e.g. methane, laughing gas, etc.) associated with a product, along  its  supply-chain and sometimes including from use and end-of-life  recovery  and disposal.
Causes of these emissions are, for example, electricity  production  in power plants, heating with fossil fuels, transport  operations and  other industrial and agricultural processes.